Title: Gone Stumping
Author: Braden Williams
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Genre: M/M contemporary romance
Length: Novella (80 pages)
Rating: 3 stars out of 5
A guest review by Jenre
Summary Review
An OK romance about looking beneath the surface.
THE BLURB
Self-absorbed Aidan Montgomery knows what he wants: a life of luxury and material wealth. To get it he’s stumping on the campaign trail for Senator Philip Brenton and carrying on a rather perfunctory affair with him to boot. The senator is his ticket to better living, and Aidan is content not to look too closely at Brenton’s back room business dealings.
When discrepancies over property lines for a new casino development in the senator’s district surface, axe man Rafe McCafferty becomes an unwilling participant in the dispute. A suspicious accident on the logging company owner’s job site draws Aidan and Rafe into murky plans that threaten not only their jobs, but Aidan’s shallow lifestyle and his vision for the future. There are no clear-cut answers for either of them, that is, until they have to unite for their own survival.
THE REVIEW
Before I begin, I just want to mention that although the blurb of the book, which I’ve taken from the publisher’s site, spells the hero’s name as Aidan, my copy of the story has his name spelled as Aiden all the way through, so I’m sticking to what is probably the author’s original spelling, rather than what’s in the blurb.
Aiden is one of life’s movers and shakers. He’s just got a job as campaign manager to a senator, through his good looks and a willingness to be bedded by the senator, and accepts that if he’s going to get anywhere in the political field then it’s important to look good and leave your misgivings behind. Almost immediately he’s thrown into the deep end when a scandal threatens to break. This leads to Aiden meeting Rafe, a logger who has noticed some discrepancies in the mapping for a new casino development.
I said in the summary that this was an OK romance, and it was. It has a decent plot, with fairly innocuous characters, who fall rather into the stereotype of ‘arrogant, selfish and vain’ for Aiden, and ‘honest, decent and hardworking’ for Rafe. There wasn’t anything wrong with these characters as they acted in the expected way, just that there was no development beyond that. The men existed in a bubble and what you saw was what you got, and even a slight amount of back story on Rafe, giving the reasons for his initial antagonism towards Aiden, wasn’t enough to make either Rafe or Aiden more than two dimensional.
The same went for the plot. It could have been quite a tricksy story about political intrigue and corruption, but falls far short of that. The focus is mainly on Aiden and his ambitious ways, and how those ideals are overturned as the story progresses – not exactly the most original of plots, but it worked well within the context. As everything worked out exactly as I expected, I wasn’t particularly grabbed or excited about the story, just as I wasn’t wholly engaged by the characters. This could partly be due to the writing, which was quite stilted with an overuse of the passive voice, making me more of an observer to the events of the book, than allowing me to be drawn into the feelings of the characters.
I’ve given this book 3 stars because it fits well the title of ‘average’, meaning that the characters are inoffensive and the story is mildly interesting. Those readers looking for something short, and who don’t mind that there is on page sex between the hero and a character apart from the other hero, may enjoy this book.
I actually have moods where this sort of read might be just the thing (ie, recuperating from a really intense read).
Hi Chris
*sigh*
Last week I wrote a glowing review of a book and you said it wasn’t calling to you. Today I do a review of an average read and you think you might like it.
O.O
I hope you do like it if you decide to go ahead and read :).
What can I say? I’m a challenging reader to reach. 🙂
Well, challenging is one word for it ;).
Interesting review, Jen. I take it this isn’t one of those books you’ll remember next month. I saw the blurb for this and was almost interested enough. Maybe when I’m fully caught up and have a couple hours to kill, eh? Thanks.
Hi Buda
I read a lot of books like that, where I’m struggling to remember the plot or the character names even a couple of days after I’ve read the story :).
As I said in my review, it wasn’t a bad book and maybe you’ll be more enthusiastic about it, once you’ve read it.
So the characters were two dimensional and the plot was dull, I guess I wouldn’t jump to read this one. Reviews for books like Gone Stumping are hard to write because one can’t get enthused about the story, and with the passive voice it might tend to put one to sleep. I’ve read my share of those lately and have yet to write reviews of any of them.
Hi Wave
It’s so true. This was quite a difficult review to write because I wasn’t really very excited about the book.